Purim, Pipelines and a Paradigm Shift

It never ceasesto amaze me that whatever Torah reading or holyday we are encountering in theJewish calendar, it conveys valuable questions and insights that seem craftedjust to address this exact moment.  So,with Purim around the corner (from the evening of March 9^th to March10^th), I turn to Megillat Esther as a Jewish lens for relating tothe pipeline protests led by the Wet’suwet’en and other Indigenous leaders andcommunity members.

We are all livinghistory – This pipeline conflict is exposing a whole host of issues related toland rights, Indigenous sovereignty and questions about who speaks forIndigenous people. These issues are not new. In fact, they have been unresolved for generations.

It isilluminating that Haman is a descendant of the Amalakites, the tribe thatattacked the Israelites in the wilderness, generations earlier.  Amalek’s assault was particularly cruelbecause they attacked the Israelites when they were famished and weary, cuttingdown the weakest stragglers at the rear of the march.  The Torah places particular caution and careon protecting the vulnerable in society and anyone, within the Jewish people oroutside it who violates this imperative, capitalizing on the vulnerabilities ofothers and attacking when they are unable to protect and care for themselves isgiven the gravest condemnation.  Hamanenters the Megillah generations after Amalek carrying this history and legacy.   The explicit mention of Haman’s lineageserves to highlight the reality that historical injustice and unresolvedconflict continues to reverberate for generations and harm that is notrectified and repaired, continues to cause damage.  Unresolved conflict is rearing its head forus now.

It’s not justthat the conflict is unresolved; the pain from the conflict is alsocarried forward. Mordechai’s cry of anguish (za’aka) when he learnsabout the planned genocide is also a reverberation of an earlier biblical cry,the wailing (tze’aka) of Esau, rising in anguish after his blessing wasstolen from him through his brother’s trickery. Mordechai’s cry is not only his own, but also that of Esau. Contemporaryscholar, Nachum Sarna writes that both cries “connote the anguished cry of theoppressed…in the face of some great injustice.  In the Bible, these terms (za’aka and tze’aka)are suffused with poignancy and pathos, with moral outrage and soul-stirringpassion.”  Both the destruction caused byAmalek and repeated by Haman, and the moral anguish experienced by Esau andrepeated in Mordechai remind us that conflict ripples through history andcontinually repeats until the underlying foundations are consistently attendedto and finally altered.

Describing thethorough systemic change that is presently needed, Hon. Jody Wilson-Raybouldstated, “Reconciliation requires transitioning from the colonial system ofgovernment imposed on First Nations through the Indian Act, to systems ofIndigenous governance that are determined by Indigenous peoples and recognizedby others…”

(www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-who-speaks-for-the-wetsuweten-people-making-sense-of-the-coastal).  Wilson-Raybould is talking about a paradigm shift, and its one that Indigenous Canadians can’t bring about without the support of non-Indigenous Canadians, like most of us reading this.

The Purim storyoffers two models for how we can engage. We see Mordechai and Esther advocatingand fighting for change in markedly different ways. Esther is within thesystem, and uses her position to influence policy change. Mordechai is outsidethe system and blatantly rebels against the norms. Neither is better orworse.  In truth, both are needed. Thechoices of Mordechai and Esther were largely based on their circumstances andsocial context, their connections and relationships, and the courage they couldeach draw upon to take on something bigger than themselves.  As Canadians, we too have many options forhow to engage with this current, and very old, conflict, and for each of us,the path to involvement will likely be different.

But to choose nopath, to stay silent and wait for others to resolve the issues, betrays ourrole as partners in reconciliation and our civic duty as Canadians. There is noneutral position here. Passively choosing to let others decide is choosing tokeep an old conflict unresolved, thus fueling the fires of conflict currentlyand into the future.

One of mysister’s favourite lines in the Purim story comes when Mordechai approachesEsther and urges her to speak up.  Esthershies away taking action explaining that no one can approach the king unlesssummoned and King Achashverosh hasn’t invited her in quite some time. Mordechairesponds with a most exquisite passage, “וּמִ֣י יוֹדֵ֔עַאִם־לְעֵ֣ת כָּזֹ֔את הִגַּ֖עַתְּ לַמַּלְכֽוּת/ And who knows, perhaps youhave attained to royal position for just such a crisis.”

We all have thecapacity to deepen our knowledge of the roots of this conflict and how itimpacts Canada in the present.  We allhave spheres of influence, great or small, and ways we can engage our voices,our relationships and circumstances. Wherever you are, whatever yourcircumstances happen to be, perhaps your being there is not happenstance.  Perhaps you, too, are in the right place atthis right moment to play a role in the paradigm shift toward truereconciliation.